Belchester Box Set

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘I’ll slip you a pair of ear plugs, Hugo. Now do stop moaning. A wake won’t hurt you, unless it’s far too early in the morning,’ replied Lady A acidly, quite exasperated with a Hugo who saw ghosts, did cartwheels down nursery slopes, and then got squiffy.

  Conversation was all about their day’s outings, the cold, the beauty, and the atmosphere in the ice-encrusted forest. As the meal ended, and the guests adjourned for ‘coffee’, Sir Cardew left them. He always smoked his daily post-prandial cigar outside at the base of the west tower.

  Leaning contentedly against the stone wall, he looked out on the winter scene of clusters of light, and the great shadows of the forest and hills, black lumps weakly illuminated but unidentifiable in the dim light of the stars. The moon was new, and hiding modestly behind a cloud on this, her debut night.

  Puffing contentedly on his cigar, appreciative of the rich, pungent smoke it produced, and which Siobhan hated so much, he was a happy man, with the exception of one fly in his metaphorical ointment, but he wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on this. This was his daily dream-time. Sir Cardew looked deep into his mind and dreamt.

  Sometime later, back in the drawing room, coffee was now over and a ghastly non-alcoholic liqueur was being served (these being kept separate in this household). Lady Siobhan gathered her guests close enough to listen, and asked them if they had ever seen the family broadsword. On receiving a uniformly negative answer, she offered to take them to view it in one of the south tower rooms, which was always kept locked, for it held a multitude of ancient and valuable family documents and Cardew did not consider a safe sufficient security. The locked room gave another layer of impenetrability that soothed his fears of burglary.

  Everyone queued, in a very British way, at the cloakroom to get access to their outer garments, for many parts of the castle seemed colder than outside, then Siobhan led them off down corridors, round corners, and finally up a flight of narrow and very worn stone spiral steps that Hugo wouldn’t even attempt to climb, waiting patiently at the foot, still glowing from the various points of the day in which he had imbibed alcoholic liquors.

  Lady Amanda puffed and blew in the rear, determined to get her two-penn’orth, after all this cavorting through freezing corridors. The only thing she knew about broadswords was that they were very long and heavy, and it took a strong and fit man to wield one, and she was determined to see it.

  She was thwarted, however, as soon as Siobhan opened the door to the strong room, which she referred to as the ‘muniment room’, she wailed in disbelief. The glass case in which the sword had been presented was smashed, and the sword had gone, taken, no doubt, by whoever had managed to get through the locked door to secure their prize, and then managing to relock the door, before departing with the filched weapon.

  Disappointment was palpable in the air. They had made quite a trek to view this historical sword, and now it proved that their efforts had been all for nothing. A buzz of disappointment echoed round the chamber, joined by the faint voice of Hugo calling, ‘Are you going to be much longer? It’s brass-monkey weather down here.’

  His plea had momentarily halted their chatter and, in the silence that followed there was a scream from outside, cut off almost as soon as it was audible.

  ‘Whatever was that?’ Lady Amanda was the first to ask. Another silence followed, in which Siobhan began to moan softly. ‘Whatever’s wrong, my dear? It’s hardly something that can be put up for sale on the open market, and I’m sure it’ll be recovered soon. If not, the insurance will take care of it.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she replied, her voice rising in panic. ‘Cardew’s outside. What if something dreadful has happened to him? I must go out and look for him.’

  ‘Not on your own, you don’t,’ stated Lady A firmly. ‘We’ll all go. If he’s fine, which I’m sure he is, we’ll just say we’re having a little starlight stroll, and then encourage him back inside, so that you can tell him about the theft.’

  Collecting Hugo into their midst on the way down, they headed outside. Siobhan had explained to them Cardew’s nightly ritual of smoking his only cigar of the day, so they all began to approach the west tower en masse. As they walked, slowly now, in case there really was something ghastly waiting for them, Lady A rummaged about in her handbag and produced a fair-sized torch.

  Hugo glanced at her with amazement, but she merely replied, ‘I just like to be prepared for all eventualities; that’s all,’ and quickened her step slightly, to catch up with the others, who were chattering about what might have happened. As they turned to go round the west tower, however, there was complete silence, and it was only Lady Amanda’s out-of-breath question that broke this stunned silence. ‘Anything afoot?’ she puffed, as she arrived slightly tardily, then saw what they had already seen.

  Sir Cardew was pinned to the ground, literally, the handle of the mighty broadsword sticking out of the top of his head, the point of the blade embedded in the grass between his feet, beside which his cigar slowly smouldered into extinction.

  Another scream rent the air!

  What to do? An out-of-hours call to Inspector Glenister threw up the fact that he would not be able to get a helicopter to the castle before daylight, having not long departed, and so it was decided, there would have to be a guard kept on Sir Cardew’s cadaver overnight, so that foxes and the like wouldn’t nibble at it. It would also have to be a guard comprised of two people, so that the murderer would have neither time nor opportunity to destroy any evidence left behind, due to there being a witness with him – or even her.

  The sword must have been dropped: the thing was so heavy, Siobhan explained, that she couldn’t even lift it. The west tower being the highest, just dropping it would prove fatal. Its own weight, aided by the process of falling, would easily slip through flesh and bone like a hot knife through butter, and the fact that it had actually pinned Cardew to the ground was put down more to luck than judgement, on the part of the murderer.

  No one could have foreseen that incredible accuracy occurring. The original objective was evidently just to kill him. But why? And who? They already knew with what. There was absolutely no need to search for a weapon.

  It was finally decided that the outdoor staff would be roused and rostered, in pairs, to be on guard throughout the night, and Macdonald was summoned to drag an ancient brazier out from some disreputable part of the nether regions of the castle, so that no one froze to death before morning. Moira took the weeping Siobhan back inside, and the others dispersed for the night. There was nothing more to be done until Glenister arrived on the morrow.

  When Lady A and Hugo reached the comparative warmth of the entrance hall, they found Enid Tweedie standing at the bottom of the staircase wringing her hands, a look of great relief flooding her face, when she caught sight of the two friends.

  ‘Thank God you’re here,’ she cried. ‘I went to the drawing room after dinner and found no one there. I had no idea where you’d gone. It was like finding a land-locked Marie Celeste.’

  ‘I thought there was someone missing at dinner. Have you been expelled from serving because you can’t recognise a plate?’ asked Lady A, facetiously, then softened her manner as Enid burst into sobs. This wasn’t like her at all and, between gulps and sniffles, she explained that she’d been looking after ‘poor Beauchamp’.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong with Beauchamp? As far as I know he’s never had a day’s illness in his life,’ his half-sister said, speaking rather more softly.

  ‘Robust chap, Beauchamp!’ declared Hugo. ‘Can’t imagine the man ill.’

  Edith explained how he had arrived back at the castle earlier, the parlous condition in which he’d arrived, and what Walter Waule and she had done to treat him. ‘He was on the verge of hypothermia, you know. He couldn’t walk or speak when we got him inside.

  ‘Once he was sleeping, I excused myself from any other duties, as I am supposed to be your lady’s maid, and I’ve been sitting by his bedside ever since. I only came
down again because I looked out and saw a group of people heading for the front door, so I rushed down to see if you were amongst them.’

  She had hardly finished speaking when Lady A went tearing up the stone stairs, two at a time, shouting, ‘Beauchamp, Beauchamp, are you all right?’ Enid and Hugo followed at a more sedate pace; one that suited Hugo’s two still-unreplaced joints, and allowed Edith to recover her aplomb.

  When they were all gathered together in the manservant’s bedroom, Enid was absolutely dumbfounded to see Lady A throw one arm around Hugo and another around Beauchamp and burst into tears. This was a unique occasion, and she kept her silence in respect for this bombshell behaviour.

  Lady Amanda’s shoulder shook as she wailed, ‘I nearly lost both of you in one day. Whatever would I have done? Life wouldn’t have been worth living without the two of you. I sent you off, Hugo, on a fool’s errand, to try skiing, and I sent you, Beauchamp, on what turned out almost to be a suicide mission. How can you ever forgive me?

  ‘What a fool I am, never to consider the consequences of my little whims, but you know what I’m like when I get the scent of blood in my nostrils. I’m like a stupid bloodhound: nose down, following, and damn what the rest of the world’s doing.’

  Hugo disentangled himself from her embrace: he found close contact with another, whoever it was, intensely uncomfortable, but patted her on the shoulder in an avuncular manner. Beauchamp also freed himself and commented, ‘No harm done, er, Manda. How’s the sleuthing coming along? I do have some news.’

  Enid approached the bed and asked if he’d like a nice cup of tea – the panacea of the masses – thinking that the manservant even looked formally attired in his pyjamas. The jacket, which was the visible half, appeared to have been freshly ironed while he was wearing it and, although he was still a little wan-looking, he seemed none the worse for his experience.

  ‘I’ll bring a tray so we can all perk ourselves up, shall I?’ she chirped, and made her way down to the kitchen. When she arrived there, there was a black cat curled up in front of the range, and the sight cheered her. A noise from the doorway alerted the animal. It took one look towards whoever was entering, fluffed up its fur in fear, and shot out of the room as if its tail were on fire.

  Looking over her shoulder, Enid espied Sarah Fraser approaching the huge old fridge, and thought that the lump of a girl looked exactly like a Rottweiler in lipstick. It would be a brave man who took that on for a wife.

  The lump of a girl looked at Enid and commented, ‘That cat thinks he’s Russian.’

  Enid fell for it. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because anyone who sees him tells him to bugger off – Buggerov – get it?’

  Enid merely sniffed, being very fond of cats herself, and had actually had one until quite recently.

  Through the back door, Angus Hamilton the chauffeur, who had just finished polishing the cars, came in rubbing his cold hands together and called out, ‘Sarah, will ye make a wee cup o’ tea for the two of us, and we can have a nice bitty chat?’

  Sarah glanced briefly at him in/ disgust, and replied, ‘Feck off, ye dirty owl man,’ before stumping out of the kitchen in high dudgeon.

  Enid shook her head, thinking that, with a face and figure like that, Sarah should take every chance she was offered. Hostility never produced any orange blossom, and that was a fact.

  When she returned with the tea tray, Beauchamp had been apprised of the details of Sir Cardew’s grisly fate, and was as flummoxed as the others as to who or why anyone would attempt something so macabre. ‘We need to make some associations!’ declared Lady A. ‘There’s something very improper,’ (so typical of her to use a word like that) ‘going on around here, and two people have died so far.

  ‘We’re actually in situ, and we have the best chance of sorting out the good guys from the bad. After all, this won’t be the first time we’ve done it. I suggest we have a meeting in the morning, to pool all we can about who associates with whom, who might have been observed in a place they were unlikely to be found … and all that jazz,’ she concluded.

  ‘And now, Enid, we have managed to suppress Beauchamp’s eagerness to tell us of what he discovered on his ill-fated trip into the forest, so I suggest that, if we are all sitting comfortably, he begin.’

  Beauchamp put down his cup on the bedside locker, cleared his throat, and launched into his story. ‘Lady Amanda,’ he began, a little embarrassed that that was the second time he had uttered her forename this evening, ‘sent me off … no, let me start at the absolute beginning.

  ‘I had gone to the nursery slope with Mr Hugo, but the skiing didn’t last long after Mr Hugo’s display of acrobatics. I decided that I would catch up with her ladyship, as the stalking group had left later than the skiing party, and eventually caught up with her on the edge of the forest.

  ‘Something had caught her eye in the distance, and I was dispatched to investigate what was causing the thin spiral of white smoke that was rising in the distance. It was a lot further away than either of us had imagined, and it took me some considerable time to reach the source. And it seemed that the stalking party had wasted no time in taking advantage of you “bunking off”, your ladyship.

  ‘They were all there, outside this wooden construction, and it was from this that the thin spire of smoke was rising. Sir Cardew, Wriothesley (we call him Rizzly Grizzly in the servant’s hall), Wallace Menzies – he’s known as ‘Mingin’’, and Macdonald were all gathered together in a huddle. When they went inside, I got as close as I could, to see exactly what was going on inside the building, if I can dignify such a ramshackle structure as that, as such, and I managed to get a peek through one of the filthy panes of glass.

  ‘They had a huge still going in there: a huge and completely illegal still, I might add. Well, I scarpered after that, and it was just as well I didn’t’ hang round, for the light was going, and I’m afraid I was led astray a few times. I never realised before how much one tree looks like another. It’s all so much more difficult at twilight.

  ‘Anyway, I think that answers a lot of our questions as to why. We need to work on the fine details, however. How on earth did the piper get involved in all this? Was he part of the ‘gang’, for want of a better word? Who took the sword? Was it a lone action, or part of a conspiracy? And why Sir Cardew? We still have a long way to go, with respect.’

  ‘Oh, Beauchamp, it’s so good to have you back on form. When you didn’t come back and there were no cocktails, I had the most enormous senior moment, for I thought you’d stayed on at the ski slope to perfect the art, knowing what you are for getting things exactly right. How can you forgive me for such laxity?’

  ‘Precisely!’ cut in Hugo. ‘I had to make us a gin and tonic, and very poor it was too. I know it’s only two ingredients, but it tasted foul, and had no kick whatsoever.’

  ‘That’s because I usually mix two parts gin to one part tonic,’ Beauchamp informed him, with a knowing smirk.

  Things were back to normal. For now.

  The day, with all its unfamiliar activities, was followed by an equally disturbing night. Lady A and Hugo had had a brandy in front of the former’s fire before turning in, leaving Enid to pander to Beauchamp’s every whim, and didn’t get to bed until well after the witching hour, Lady A completely forgetting to furnish her friend with earplugs in defiance of the, now forgotten, new morning piper.

  Her ladyship went out like a light, to use a rather vulgar expression, but Hugo tossed and turned, regularly discovering new parts of his body that seemed to be developing what felt like spectacular bruises. He managed to doze for a while, then dreamt that he was tied up and being terrorised by some terrible brute.

  When he awoke, in a muck-sweat, he found himself so tangled in the sheets that he could barely move a muscle, and spent some time undoing the knot that he had made of himself and the bedding, huffing and puffing and muttering, ‘Damn!’ ‘Blast!’ and ‘Tiddlywinks!’ under his breath, as his over-exercised muscle
s protested at such brutal treatment.

  Eventually getting himself settled again, although he had had to get out and remake the bed, he tried once more to go to sleep, but such a benison eluded him still, and it wasn’t until two-thirty that he finally slipped into a light doze. What seemed like only a minute or two later, but was in fact over an hour, he became aware of something in close proximity to his head, opened his eyes, and found himself staring into the same dark-veiled countenance as he had, on one previous occasion.

  When Hugo screamed, it was in a surprising falsetto pitch, and this noise pierced Lady Amanda’s deep sleep of the innocent. Realising immediately that the noise was coming from Hugo’s room, she leapt from her bed, ready for action, grabbed a poker from beside the fireplace, and shot through the adjoining door – or, at least, that’s what she had intended to do.

  She, herself, in an inattentive moment, had slipped the bolt on her side when Hugo had left her for the night, and she merely rebounded from its solid surface and landed in a heap on the floor, the poker committing an act of gross indecency upon her person. As she rose to hands and knees, she could hear shouting from the adjoining room. ‘Manda! Manda! Are you being attacked? Someone’s locked the door? Who’s in there with you?’

  Slowly she rose to her feet and slipped the bolt, and the door shot open from the other side. This was unfortunate, as it opened into her room, and she went down with the poker again with a not surprising feeling of déjà vu. ‘Manda! Manda! What’s happening in there?’ bellowed Hugo, just making things worse by pushing the door and shoving her further across the floor.